Two big things today:

ONE: I donated blood and platelets today! :D

TWO: We get to find out the juicy details of what Yugi meant in the last chapter!

Let's see what the heck is gonna happen...


Chapter 29

Yugi

I knock on the door of the men's room, and then walk inside. On one wall is a really lone, gross urinal. On the other hand, washing his hands in a sink, is Seto. He's wearing a pair of my dad's uniform pants. He looks different now, as if all the straight lines that had been used to draw his face have been smudged. "Joey said you wanted me to come in here?" I say.

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you alone, and all the conference rooms are upstairs. Your dad doesn't think I ought to tackle that just yet. " He wipes his hands on a towel. "I'm sorry about what happened."

Well, I don't even know if there's a decent answer to that. I chew on my lower lip. "Is that why I couldn't pat the dog?"

"Yeah."

"How does Coco know what to do?"

Seto shrugs. "It's supposed to have something to do with the scent or electrical impulses that an animal can sense before a human can. But I think it's because we know each other so well." He pats Coco on the neck. "He gets me somewhere safe before it happens. I usually have about twenty minutes of lead time."

"Huh." I am suddenly shy. I've been with Yami when he's really, really sick, but this is different. I hadn't been expecting this from Seto. "Is this why you took my case?"

"So that I could have a seizure in public? Believe me, no."

"Not that." I look away from him. "Because you know what it's like to not have any control over your body."

"Maybe," Seto says thoughtfully. "But my doorknobs did sorely need polishing."

If he's trying to make me feel better, he's failing horribly. "I told you having me testify wasn't the greatest idea."

He puts his hands on my shoulders. "Yugi, come on. If I can go back in there after that performance, you sure as hell can climb into the hot seat for a few more questions."

How am I supposed to fight that logic? So I follow Seto back into the courtroom, where nothing is the way it was just an hour ago. With everyone watching him like he's a ticking bomb, Seto walks up to the bench and turns to the court in general. "I'm very sorry about that, Judge," he says. "Anything for a ten-minute break, right?"

How can he make jokes about something like this? And then I realize: it's what Yami does, too. Maybe if God gives you a handicap, he makes sure you've got a few extra doses of humor to take the edge off.

"Why don't you take the rest of the day, Counselor," Judge Solomon offers.

"No, I am all right now. And I think it's important that we get to the bottom of this." He turns to the court reporter. "Could you, uh, refresh my memory?"

She reads back the transcript, and Seto nods, but he acts like he's hearing my words, regurgitated, for the very first time. "All right, Yugi, you were saying Yami asked you to file this lawsuit for medical emancipation?"

Again, I squirm. "Not quite."

"Can you explain?"

"He didn't ask me to file the lawsuit."

"Then what did he ask you?"

I steal a glance at my mother. She knows; she has to know. Don't make me say it out loud.

"Yugi," Seto presses, "what did he ask you?"

I shake my head, tight-lipped, and Judge Solomon leans over. "Yugi, you're going to have to give us an answer to this question."

"Fine." The truth bursts out of me; a raging river, now that the dam's washed away. "He asked me to kill him."


The first thing that was wrong was that Yami had locked the door to his bedroom, when there wasn't really a lock, which meant he'd either pushed up furniture or pennied it shut. "Yami," I yelled, banging, because I was sweaty and gross from running around the street, to build up endurance, and I wanted a shower and change. "Yami, this isn't fair. You have the only towel!"

I guess I made enough noise, because he opened up. And that was the second thing: there was something wrong about the room. I glanced around, but everything seemed to be in place—most importantly, his room seemed to be in order—and yet Yami still looked like he'd swilled a mystery.

"What's your problem?" I asked, and then I grabbed the towel and went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and smelled it—sweet and almost angry, the same boozy scent I associated with Atemu's apartment. I started opening up cabinets and rummaging through towels and trying to find the proof, no pun intended, and sure enough there were a half-empty bottle of whiskey hidden behind the boxes of tampons.

"Looky here..." I said, brandishing it and walked back into the bedroom, thinking I had a great little wedge of blackmail to use to my advantage for a while, and then I saw Yami holding the pills.

"What are you doing?"

Yami rolled over. "Leave me alone, Yugi."

"Are you crazy?"

"No," Yami said. "I'm just sick of waiting for something that's going to happen anyway. I thin I've just fucked everyone's life long enough, don't you?"

"But everyone's worked so hard just to keep you alive. You can't kill yourself."

All of a sudden Yami started to cry. "I know. I can't."

It took me a few moments to realize this meant he'd already tried it before.


My mother gets up slowly. "It's not true," she says, her voice stretched thin as glass. "Yugi, I don't know why you'd say that."

My eyes fill up. "Why would I make it up?"

She walks closer. "Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe he was just having a bad day, or being dramatic." She smiles in the pained way of people who really want to cry. "Because if he was that upset, he would have told me."

"He couldn't tell you," I reply. "He was too afraid if he killed himself he'd be killing you, too." I cannot catch my breath. I am sinking in a tar pit; I am running and the ground's gone beneath my feet. Seto asks the judge for a few minutes so that I can pull myself together, but even if Judge Solomon answers, I am crying so hard I don't want to hear it. "I don't want him to die, but I know he doesn't want to live like this, and I'm the one who can give him what he wants." I keep my eyes on my mother, even as she swims away from me. "I've always been the one who can give him what he wants."


The next time it came up was after my mother came into my room to talk about donating a kidney. Yami looked at me, after mom and dad left, saying, "Don't do it."

I glanced at him. "What are you talking about? Of course I'm going to do it."

We were getting undressed, and I noticed that we had picked the same pajamas—shiny satin ones with little stars on it. As I slid into my bed I thought we looked like we did as little kids, when our parents would dress us similarly because they thought it was cute.

"Do you think it would work?" I asked. "A kidney transplant?"

Yami looked at me. "It might." He leaned over, his hand on the light switch. "Don't do it," he repeated, and it wasn't until I heard him a second time that I finally understood what he was really saying.


My mother is a breath away from me, and in her eyes are all the mistakes she's ever made. My father comes up and puts his arm around her shoulders. "Come sit down," he whispers into her hair.

"Your Honor," Seto says, getting to his feet. "May I?"

He walks toward me, Coco right beside him. I am just as shaky as he is. I think about that dog an hour ago. How did he know for sure what Seto really needed, and when?

"Yugi, do you love your brother?"

"Of course."

"But you were willing to take an action that might kill him?"

Something flashes inside me. "It was so he wouldn't have to go through this anymore. I thought it was what he wanted."

He goes silent; and then I realize at that moment: he knows.

Inside me, something breaks. "It was...it was what I wanted, too."


We were in the kitchen, washing and drying dishes. "You hate going to the hospital," Yami said.

"Well, duh." I put the forks and spoons, clean, back into the drawer.

"I know you'd do anything to not have to go there anymore."

I glanced at him. "Sure. Because you'd be healthy."

"Or dead." Yami plunged his hands into the soapy water, careful not to look at me. "Think about it, Yugi. You could go to your swimming camps. You could choose a college in a whole different country. You could do anything you want and never have to worry about me."

He pulled these examples right out of my head, and I could feel myself blushing, ashamed that they were even up there to be drawn out into the open. If Yami was feeling guilty about being a burden, then I was feeling twice as guilty for knowing he felt that way. For knowing I felt that way.

I hugged him on impulse and kiss him on the lips as a chaste kiss. After I did that, we didn't talk. I dried whatever he handed me, and we both tried to pretend we didn't know the truth: that in addition to the piece of me that's always wanted Yami to live and that forbidden love I had, there's another, horrible piece of me that sometimes wishes I were free.


There, they understand: I am a monster. I started this lawsuit for some reasons I'm proud of and many I'm not. And now Seto will see why I couldn't be a witness—not because I was scared to talk in front of everyone—but because of all these terrible feelings, some of which are too awful to speak out loud. That I wanted Yami alive, but also want to be myself, not a part of him. That I wanted the chance to grow up, even if Yami can't. That Yami's death would be the worst thing that's ever happened to me...and also the best.

That sometimes, when I think about all this, I hate myself and just want to crawl back to where I was, to the person they want me to be.

Now the whole courtroom is looking at me, and I'm sure that the witness stand or my skin or maybe both is about to implode. Under this magnifying glass, you can see right down to the rotten core at the heart of me. Maybe if they keep staring at me, I will go up in blue, bitter smoke. Maybe I will disappear without a trace.

"Yugi," Seto says quietly, "what made you think that Yami wanted to die?"

"He said he was ready."

He walks up until he is standing right in front of me. "Isn't it possible that's that same reason he asked you to help him?"

I look up slowly, and unwrap this gift Seto's just handed me. What if Yami wanted to die, so that I could live? What if after all these years of saving Yami, he was only trying to do the same for me?

"Did you tell Yami you were going to stop being a donor?"

"Yes," I whisper.

"When?"

"The night before I hired you."

"Yugi, what did Yami say?"

Until now, I hadn't really thought about it, but Seto has triggered the memory. My brother had gotten very quiet, so quiet that I wondered if he'd fallen asleep. And then he turned to me with all the world in his eyes, and a smile that crumbled like a fault line.

I glance up at Seto. "He said thanks."


Michelle

It is Judge Solomon's idea to take a field trip of sorts, so that he can talk to Yami. When we all reach the hospital, he is sitting up in bed, absently staring at the TV set that Yami flick through with the remote. He is thin, his skin cast yellow, but he's conscious. "The tin man," Atemu says, "or the scarecrow?"

"Scarecrow would get the stuffing knocked out of him," Yami says. "Chynna from the WWF, or the Crocodile Hunter?"

Atemu snorts. "The Croc dude. Everyone knows the WWF is fake." He glances at him. "Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.?"

"They wouldn't sign the waiver."

"We're talking Celebrity Boxing on Fox," Atemu says. "What makes you think they bother with a waiver?"

Yami grins. "One of them would sit down in the ring, and the other wouldn't put his mouthguard in." This is the moment I walk inside. "Hey, Mom," he asks, "who'd win on Hypothetical Celebrity Boxing—Marcia or Jan Brady?"

He notices then that I am not alone. As the whole crowd dribbles into the room, his eyes widen, and he pulls the covers up higher. He looks right at Yugi, but his brother refuses to meet his eye. "What's going on?"

The judge steps forward, takes my arm. "I know you want to talk to him, Michelle, but I need to talk to him." He walks forward, extending his hand. "Hi, Yami. I'm Judge Solomon. I was wondering if I could maybe speak to you for a few minutes? Alone," he adds, and one by one, everyone else leaves the room.

I am the last to go. I watch Yami lean back against the pillows, suddenly exhausted again. "I had a feeling you'd come," he tells the judge.

"Why?"

"Because," Yami says, "it always comes back to me."


When Judge Solomon comes outside, grim and troubled, Seto, Darrell, and I get to our feet. "Tomorrow," he says. "Closing's at nine A.M." With a nod to Elizabeth to follow, he walks down the hallway.

"Come on," Joey tells Seto. "You're at da mercy of my chaperonage."

"That's not a real word." But instead of following him, he walks toward me. "Michelle," he says simply, "I'm sorry." He gives me one more gift: "You'll take Yugi home?"

The minute they leave, Yugi turns to me. "I really need to see Yami."

I slide an arm around him. "Of course you can."

We go inside, just our family, and Yugi sits down on the edge of Yami's bed. "Hey," Yami murmurs, his eyes opening.

Yugi shakes his head; it takes a moment for him to find the right words. "I tried," he says finally, his voice catching like cotton on thorns, as Yami squeezes his hand.

Atemu sits down on the other side. The three of them in one spot; it makes me think of the Christmas card photo we would take each October, balancing them in height order in the wings of a maple tree or on a stone wall, one frozen moment for everyone to remember them by.

"Alf or Mr. Ed," Atemu says.

The corners of Yami's mouth turn up. "Horse. Eighth round."

"You're on."

Finally Darrell leans down and kisses the top of Yami's forehead. "You get a good night's sleep." As Yugi and Atemu slip into the all, he kisses me goodbye, too. "Call me," he whispers.

And then, when they are gone, I sit down beside my son. His arms are so thin I can see the bones shifting as he moves; his eyes seem older than mine.

"I guess you have questions," Yami says.

"Maybe later," I answer, surprising myself. I climb up onto the bed and fold him into my embrace.

I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it's not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all. "Yami," I confess. "I'm so sorry."

He pushes back from me, until he can look me in the eye. "Don't be," he says fiercely. "Because I'm not." He tries to smile, tries so damn hard. "It was a good on, Mom, wasn't it?"

I bite my lip, feel the heaviness of tears. "It was the best," I answer.


OMG! Only a few chapters left until this story is over! Whoa...

The ending will shock you all, trust me, it will. Anyone who might know, please respect my wishes and don't post it in your review. Send me a PM and we'll talk.

Don't forget to review everyone! I have seen the hits and visitors. ^.-